Over the past few years, honey bee keepers have experienced problems due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has hurt honey bee populations, causing some growers of fruits, nuts and vegetables to wonder how their crops will be pollinated in the future.

Insects such as honeybees and bumble bees are predictable in the way they move among flowers, typically moving directly from one flower to an adjacent cluster of flowers in the same row of plants. The bees’ flight paths have a direct affect on their ability to hunt for pollen and generate “gene flow”, fertilization and seed production that results when pollen moves from one plant to another.

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is largely responsible for recent global warming and the rise in sea levels. However, a team of scientists, including two Smithsonian ecologists, have found that this same increase in CO2 may ironically counterbalance some of its negative effects on one of the planet’s most valuable ecosystems–wetlands.